Good morning everyone. Congratulations on making it in.
And it's the snow of which I'm sure we are all tired, but also
I've been monitoring the weather apps intensely and we're going
to get a hot a heat wave next week.
So excited about that. If we haven't met already, my
name is Mandy. I'm on staff here at the Garden
Church, and this morning I'm very excited to be kicking off
our new sermon series on the Book of Hebrews, which is such a
rich text, so I hope that you all will come to love it as much
as I do. Hebrews is very complex, and
it's very unique in the way that it presents ideas and makes
theological arguments. And Hebrews is unapologetically
and expressively Worshipful. The author, who is anonymous, is
devoted to elevating the name of Jesus and kind of examining from
every angle how magnificent he is and why he alone is worthy of
our worship. However, if you have been
following along with our Lent guide and reading through
Hebrews this week, you might already feel a little bit dazed
and confused. That's perfectly normal.
I just want to validate you if you've been reading it, because
Hebrews is often named as one of the most challenging books in
the New Testament to read and to interpret.
And I kind of feel like it should come with a warning
label. You know, like warning may cause
dizziness and disorientation due to a high volume of New
Testament quotations. I'm kind of serious though,
because for example, Hebrews chapter 1 and 2, which is what
I'm covering today, actually contains 11 different passages
from the Old Testament spanning from Psalms to Deuteronomy to
Isaiah. So it's kind of intense.
But here's a great example of why this can prove tricky for us
as modern day readers. If you look at your passages,
you'll notice that there is a an excerpt from the beginning of
Hebrews chapter 1 and an excerpt from the end of chapters 2.
So what about all the missing verses in between?
Well, I can summarize them for you in just one sentence.
Jesus is greater than the angels.
Cool. Sermon over.
No, just kidding. But basically the author has a
ton of passages that he lists from the Old Testament that are
about angels and about Jesus relationship and how he's
greater than the angels. And when I read this, I'm kind
of like, well, I agree. Like not saying that I disagree,
but also like, why does that matter?
And that is the question that we'll be looking to answer today
because throughout the book of Hebrews, the author basically
argues that Jesus is greater than the angels and the prophets
and Moses and Joshua and the priesthood.
And we might read these things and be like, yes, Amen.
We are on board, but maybe none of them feel particularly
significant to us. So it's easy to say that Jesus
is greater. But for the original readers of
the book of Hebrews, these things represented their
culture, their history, their hope, their understanding of
God. And so when those things are
challenged, we tend to get really uncomfortable.
So this is the conversation that we're invited into today.
It's not just about angels or prophets or the law.
It's about how we view God, how we relate to Him, and whether
we're holding anything else in our lives above Him.
And that's why Hebrews can still speak to us today, because it is
a revelation of the God who loves us and who is inviting us
to trust in his salvation. So as you get started, let me
just pray for us now that God would help us to receive his
love and step into that trust. Lord Jesus, we thank you for the
gift of Your Word, and we thank you for bringing us together
here this morning. God, we want to learn from you.
We ask that whatever else is going on in our lives, whatever
else is maybe occupying our thoughts, that you would help us
to just lay those things at your feet.
God, we want to receive from you this morning.
We want to draw nearer to You. We want to set aside anything
that might be an obstacle between US and You so that we
can just be fully in your presence, God, fully in the
presence of your love, fully trusting in your power, fully
trusting in your ability to save us, to offer us everything that
we need. God.
So we just want to come before you this morning and ask that
you would speak. Holy Spirit, we thank you for
being near to us. We thank you that you do speak.
We thank you for your grace. Open our hearts and ears this
morning in Jesus name, Amen. All right, so again, as we get
started, let's return to our big question, kind of the favorite
question of every three-year old, you know, which is why, why
did the author write the book of Hebrews?
Why do these topics matter so much that he was willing to
invest time and energy and ink and papyrus to write out these
arguments? And there's kind of a question
behind that question, which is who, Like who was this book
written for and what were the challenges that were facing
them? Well, the title of the book is
Hebrews for a reason. The first readers were Hebrews.
They were Jews, and their lives were shaped by the Torah, by the
law of God. And so, you know, they grew up
being taught the texts of the Old Testament.
So these Hebrews, as I'll refer to them, we're also second
generation Christians, meaning they were not alive when Jesus
walked the earth. Instead, they learned about
Christianity kind of second hand from the testimonies of
eyewitnesses or, you know, from the stories and teachings that
would one day become the New Testament.
So in that way, we might have something in common with them.
They chose to believe in the gospel of Jesus, not by sight,
but by faith. So these Hebrews also faced
persecution in their time, mostly in the form of what you
might call social dishonor. So they were like, ostracized by
society because of their faith. They suffered verbal abuse,
maybe even loss of property or income.
They were marginalized. And over time, this seems to
have, like, worn down their stamina.
So many of these Hebrew Christians were struggling in
their faith. They had maybe stopped attending
church gatherings. They were compromising on their
beliefs. They were tempted to return to
their Jewish roots because Judaism was more accepted, so
it'd be easier. So they were tempted to kind of
water down the gospel of Jesus. So maybe they weren't, you know,
dramatically rejecting Jesus and who he is, But they were kind of
slowly drifting away and, like, caving in to social pressures.
So This is why the letter to the Hebrews was written, to
encourage a community of weary Christians who are struggling in
their faith in Jesus. So what does the author want to
say to them? His core message, again, could
be summarized in a single phrase.
Jesus is greater. 13 times throughout the book, the author
uses the Greek word for greater or better.
Jesus is like lifted up as the fulfillment of everything that
the Old Testament writes about, everything that God's people
have been waiting for. So the author is like exhorting
his listeners, hold fast to your faith in Jesus, no matter the
challenges facing you because Jesus is greater and there's no
other savior but him. So today, as we explore chapter
1 and two of the book of Hebrews, there's kind of three
main ideas that I want us to focus on.
And because this book is all about the greatness of Jesus,
all three are essentially invitations to worship.
Because that's what Hebrews is about, elevating the name of
Jesus above everything and everyone in our lives.
So here are the three invitations I have to offer you
today #1 worship Jesus as he is number 2.
Let Jesus lead the way. I was actually really tempted to
make that one, let Jesus take the wheel, but it was too corny.
I couldn't do it. So it's let Jesus lead the way.
So close and #3 leave your fears nailed to the cross.
So #1 worship Jesus as he is. So I mentioned that most of the
verses throughout Hebrews chapter 1 and 2 are Old
Testament quotes and they're either about angels or they're
about Jesus kingship and kind of the relationship between the
two. So angels seem cool enough,
right? Like they play like key roles at
major moments in biblical history.
But if I were writing like a theological letter to encourage
my fellow Christians in their faith, I would probably mention
angels about 0 times. Like, it's not a core part of
how I think about the world. It's not something I was raised
with. So it is kind of perplexing for
me that the author of Hebrews just like dedicates so much air
time to them. So what is going on here?
Why does it seem important? Well, in the era between the Old
Testament and the New Testament, Jewish theologians had given
increasingly important roles to angels.
One Bible scholar says that angels were regarded as the ones
through whom God gave the law and knowledge.
They thought that they served as mediators between humanity and
God since they stand in his presence.
And some even held that angels governed the world.
So this time, angels were given like this very elevated position
in the eyes of many. And that's not all.
Jewish Christians are also criticized and misunderstood by
kind of the larger Jewish community.
They were seen as heretics, like, dangerously misguided and
disloyal to the teachings of the Old Testament.
And they were often accused of worshipping a second God.
So that's like, you know, a misunderstanding of who Jesus
is. They saw him as, oh, you're
worshipping a second God. And so this was kind of part of
the social pressure that they faced from their own family and
friends and neighbors. And so one compromise that some
Christians had made was to say that Jesus was merely a great
Angel. You know, it seems to solve the
problem if someone is accusing you of Poly polytheism.
Like Jesus still gets to be a powerful divine being, but he's
no longer God himself. And you don't have to explain
the Trinity or like wrestle with how it's possible for Jesus to
be like fully God and fully human.
Like, you're just kind of done, right.
So as we hear this, like, maybe it feels relatable to you.
Maybe it doesn't, might depend on how you feel about angels,
right? But here is the heart of the
problem. And this might be something that
we can relate to. The Hebrews were tempted to
reshape God's identity into something that made their lives
easier. Going to say it again.
The Hebrews, So the first readers of the book of Hebrews
were tempted to reshape God's identity into something that
made their lives easier. That is a real temptation for us
as humans to try to like, edit God's nature so we don't have to
be challenged by it. For instance, you know, we may
like God's mercy, but we're uncomfortable with his anger at
sin. We may approve of his
righteousness, but we don't like it that he dispenses grace so
freely. We like that he offers to help
us in our time of need, but we don't like that he calls us to
die to ourselves, to leave our old life behind, to take up our
cross and follow him. And the parts that we're
uncomfortable with might vary depending on our personality or
our culture and our background. But more likely than not, we do
have this in common with the Hebrews.
We struggle to let God be God without trying to change him.
I remember when I was in seminary, the first theology
class that I took, we did three weeks in a row just on the
doctrine of the Trinity. Like the idea that there is like
one God who exists eternally as 3 distinct persons, Father, Son,
Holy Spirit. And I'll be honest, when I read
the syllabus I was like 3 books in three weeks.
Kind of seems like overkill to me, but looking back I have a
deeper appreciation for it. Not because I necessarily
understand the Trinity better, maybe I do, maybe I don't.
But one of my big takeaways was this.
We don't get to decide who God is.
God's identity, his threeness, his oneness, His other
attributes are not under our jurisdiction.
And if our view of God is shaped by our preferences or like our,
you know what's easier for us to kind of hold their handle?
But that's not God that we're looking at.
That's an idol. Because any God that we can
control is not real. It's merely a false God of our
own making. We don't get to decide who God
is. We do get to learn who God is.
And by his grace, God chooses to reveal himself, to make himself
known to us, but we don't get to, like select which parts of
him we like or prefer the ones that don't disrupt our
lifestyle. So on one level, we might
sympathize with the readers of Hebrews because, you know,
claiming that Jesus is God introduced like, all sorts of
complications into their lives. Like it felt hard to explain.
It challenged them to fully surrender their old ways of
thinking and to embrace like this new revelation of God that
was kind of full of mystery and scandal.
That's how Jesus was often held. And I mean, the idea that Jesus
is fully God and fully human is mind boggling, right?
Like that Jesus is somehow like the creator of the known
universe, and yet he also took on flesh and walked among us.
That Jesus holds the word world together by the power of his
word. And yet simultaneously he like,
sat with people and spoke to people and like, showed up at
dinner parties. Like if thinking about those two
things together makes your head hurt, I have good news.
That is how it's supposed to feel.
God is bigger than us. God is not supposed to be fully
comprehensible by our human brains.
His complexity does not bend to our whims.
He we don't get to simplify him when there are parts of him that
we don't understand. He's greater than us, and that
is a wonderful thing. So the Hebrews were struggling
with this pressure to make God more acceptable to their
critics, easier to handle. How might we face a similar
struggle today? Like when have we been tempted
to edit God's identity? Maybe we're scientists and we
feel the pressure to change God's miraculous nature.
Like we want to kind of make it more predictable and more
logical. Maybe we're capitalists and
we're tempted to downplay Jesus teachings on greed and
generosity. We live in a pluralistic
society, right? Like many different beliefs,
maybe we are. We feel a pressure to say that
Jesus isn't the only way, the truth and the life.
We might feel uncomfortable with a myriad of things like Jesus
emphasis on grace, his sexual ethics, his teachings on the end
times. And so we might want to kind of
try to reshape those things to make others feel more
comfortable or to make ourselves feel more comfortable.
But essentially we would. We replace the real and living
God with a dead and useless idol.
We lose the goodness and the wonder of worshipping a God who
exceeds the boundaries of our imaginations.
If any part of this is convicting to you, I know it's
been convicting to me as I've thought about it.
Here's our invitation again. It's simple.
Worship Jesus as he is. That is what the author of
Hebrews is calling us to. Remember who it is that you
believe in. Like turn back to Jesus and
proclaim his glory. Just listen to how the author
describes Jesus. This is like his goal, right?
To like get us to worship Jesus as it as it is.
So I'm going to say some of the things that he talks about here
that kind of illustrate the greatness of Jesus, right?
So first, Jesus is the creator of all things.
So everything belongs to him. Jesus is the radiance of the
glory of God. It's like the beauty of God's
character shines through him. Jesus is the exact imprint of
God's nature, so when we look at the life of Jesus, we see the
heart of the Father. Jesus upholds the universe by
the word of his power, so no matter the chaos that surrounds
us, He is the one who sustains us.
Jesus made purification for our sins, so there's nothing we have
done that cannot be forgiven. And Jesus has been crowned with
glory and honor, and his throne will last forever and ever.
So when he promises us a place in his Kingdom, in a new and a
better world, we can trust in His word.
Like when I just read these truths, these are the truths
that the book of Hebrews is full of.
It like stirs up something in my heart, like this awe and this
wonder at who Jesus is, this gratitude that this God, this
King would give his life for us. Can an Angel do that?
Can an idol do that? No.
Like who can possibly compare with the glory of Christ?
When we look at Jesus and His fullness, we see that He is
perfect as He is. Like nothing needs to be added,
nothing can be subtracted. He is everything we need.
And yes, His trinitarian and like human slash divine way of
being is beyond our understanding, but that is part
of what makes Him glorious and worthy of worship.
So we must resist the temptation to reshape God's identity into a
form that feels more convenient to us, because there's nothing
better than meeting the real Jesus and experiencing his
glory. Open your heart to actually
encountering him. That's my invitation to you
today. Let yourself be challenged by
who God is. Let your own character be shaped
by his worship Jesus as he is. So our second invitation is to
let Jesus lead the way. So the book of Hebrews also
tells us that Jesus is greater than the law and the prophets.
And in chapter 1 it says long ago, at many times and in many
ways, God spoke to our Father by the prophets, but in these last
days he has spoken to us by his Son.
So, you know, the law and the prophets were a gift from God to
guide his people. But the author is saying
something greater has come, a greater message of good news, a
greater Savior has come. And so once again, we find that
the Hebrews were facing a challenge that we may or may not
relate to, which is kind of this temptation to hold the law and
the prophets as higher than Jesus.
And those two things are basically like shorthand for
what we would call the Old Testament, like all the
revelation and the law that God provided his people.
But for Jews, this was the source of life.
Like it taught them how to live, how to align themselves with
God's will, how to receive atonement for sins, and how to
maintain hope in God's promises. The law was a good thing.
It was a gift. But here's the problem with
humanity. We are really talented at taking
a good thing and turning it into an idol.
And an idol, remember, is anything that replaces God in
our hearts, like anything that we try to derive, like our
ultimate sense of identity and purpose from.
So an idol may start out as a good thing, but then we kind of
fixate on it. Like we, we elevate it.
We, we reorganize our lives around it.
We try to squeeze every ounce of satisfaction we can get from it.
We convinced ourselves that we need it to survive.
There's this quote that's attributed to John Calvin.
It says the human heart is a perpetual idol factory.
But why? Like, why are we so addicted to
idols? Why do we keep trying to replace
God with something else? Well, there are probably
countless ways to answer that question.
I only get one sermon today, but one one element that stood out
to me, reading the book of Hebrews particularly, is our
desire for control. Like idols, by their nature, are
things that we at least feel like we can control.
God decidedly is not. So when I think about it this
way, and then I can kind of start to understand why the
Hebrews might have been hesitant to give up their reliance on the
law. It feels predictable.
It feels reliable if you have this guide book that tells you
like, how to act and you can just do what it says and things
will turn out well for you. But if the human heart can turn
anything into an idol, and it can, that includes the law of
God. And if you're wondering what it
would look like to worship God's law more than God himself?
We have access to like a really vivid example.
You might have met them. They were known as the
Pharisees. They lived during the time of
Jesus and they were among his biggest opponents.
And the Pharisees likely started out like they're a group of
religious leaders, right? So they wanted people to take
the Bible seriously. Like they wanted to provide more
clarity on how to apply scripture to our lives.
So their approach was to like develop really detailed rules
for people to follow. Like, and then those rules, we
got more rules, which we got more rules and more rules until
the people were like suffocated under the demands and all this
like red tape. But on the surface, you know,
they're concerned for the law looks like holiness.
But underneath their true motivation was revealed.
They were so desperate for control that they were unwilling
to be challenged or corrected even when Jesus came along, even
by God himself. So as I was thinking about this,
like how how that might come out in our lives today, this
metaphor came to mind for me of two different ways that you
could approach hiking. So I'm not much of A hiker, but
for the sake of this metaphor, let's say that I was setting out
to hike the Appalachian Trail. This would never happen in real
life. So already as we start this
journey, like my anxiety level would be real high because like,
this is a way of a physical level.
Not even close. But my first temptation if this
was like something I needed to do would be to like,
aggressively research the trail. Like, I would want like a highly
detailed map. I would want to mark like how
far I'm walking each day, where I'd stop, where I'd replenish
supplies. Like I'd want to like, sketch
out plans for navigating potential obstacles like rivers
or like super rocky places. I don't even know what kind of
obstacles there are. I'm not a hiker, but I would
still want to be like prepared for all of them.
Right now, this is kind of a stress driven strategy, but it
might actually succeed at keeping me alive.
But there is a second option available, and that is to go
with a guide to find, like, the premier Sherpa of the
Appalachian Trail and to just follow them.
There would still be like, you know, planning and preparing on
my end. And I think from what I know
about the Appalachian Trail, it would probably be a fairly
grueling experience no matter what I did.
But instead of relying on my own cleverness and thoroughness to
get me through the journey, I'd be relying on someone who
already knows the way in life. I think a lot of us prefer the
first approach. At least we want to be the 1:00
calling the shots, right? We want to craft the plans and
solve the problems because we kind of think that like the more
involved we are, the more secure we'll feel.
But when it comes to the spiritual life, our best efforts
will still come up short. Like even if I'm committed to
living a moral life and overcoming patterns of sin and
cultivating a relationship with God, I am not capable of finding
the way on my own, especially to eternal life.
Even if I tried, and I did try in college, that was like my
whole story. I tried.
Like you might be able to get the journey started, but before
long you would just be completely lost and overwhelmed.
Because trying to maintain control ultimately gets us
nowhere. But control has a very
attractive sales pitch. You get to be your own Sherpa
and answer to no one. But the reality that that won't
tell you is that navigating the spiritual life alone is lonely
and scary and anxiety inducing and it's honestly not worth the
cost. But again, there is a second
option, to follow Jesus, to actually know him, to learn from
him, to live in his ways. And yes, that means that you
don't get to go wherever you want, whenever you want.
It may feel like a loss of control, especially when you
really want a map and Jesus like won't give you one.
But you don't have to walk the path alone with Jesus, like not
even for a minute. You don't need a map or a
philosophy degree so you can solve the problem of sin or fix
the world or justify yourself. You just need to keep following
Jesus because he knows the way. Let Jesus lead the way.
Lastly, the book of Hebrews invites us to leave our fears
nailed to the cross. So at the end of Hebrews chapter
2, the author says that Jesus became human so that by his
death he might break the power of him who holds the power of
death, that is the devil, and to free those who all their lives
were held in slavery by their fear of death.
Y'all this verse like wrecked me.
I like read it as if I had never read it before.
I like know that I've read it before because I had to read the
whole Bible when I was in seminary.
I know I've read it and I was like, what is the saying?
This is wild, but it's like describing us as humanity as
being held in slavery to the fear of death.
Like what does that mean? So in the Bible, slavery can be
literal, but it also it's often another way of talking about
idolatry, like it's being captive to something, like
serving something that like takes from you until it believes
you dry. So, you know, when we think
about fear of death, I don't think that this is necessarily
limited to like consciously worrying about your mortality.
I think it actually includes the type of behavior that comes out
when we believe that light, this life is all there is fear of.
So in that case, fear of death might produce things like a
scarcity mentality, this feeling that time is running out and
anxiety that the change that you long for will never come.
A sense of urgency that like any goodness or pleasure has to be
found in this lifetime. Or a tendency to run from pain
as if you just might get trapped in it forever.
I don't know about you, but when I think about those fears that
way, like that feels much more familiar to me.
I'm not often consciously thinking again about my
mortality, but I'm I do have a subconscious fear that I'm
running out of time, that my life will never become what I
hoped it would be, that I'll get stuck in a reality that I don't
want to be in. I don't know how many of you
relate to this. If if not, just going to keep.
I'm just going to bring you into the world of my fears.
My fears. They often feel more like
questions that run on autoplay in the back of my mind.
Saying things like what if I have to watch everyone that I'm
close to get married and have a family, but it never happens for
me? What if I invest all of my
energy into building a community that's strong and a ministry
that matters and it fails? What if my pain from my past
wounds never gets better? Like what if trying to address
it just completely overwhelms me?
I'm not support. I'm not 100% sure if you're
supposed to confess your fears in a sermon, to be honest.
But here we are. Because this is reality.
Like the Bible wants to speak to our reality, like what it
actually is like for us as humans to live in this world.
And so if it's saying that Jesus has annihilated our fear of
death, this is what he's talking about.
This battle that many of us are fighting internally.
This is what he's come to overcome.
And the thing about those fears, though, is I feel like they're
rooted in these desires. And those desires aren't
necessarily bad. That's confusing, right?
Like we want to get rid of the fear, but like the desires
aren't necessarily bad. Like often times they're very
human. Like there's a desire to be
loved, to have a purpose, to have stability or inner peace,
to have somewhere that you belong.
But I don't think desire by itself is necessarily the
problem. I think our desperation is the
problem. It's when we begin to kind of
listen to this voice in the back of our heads, the voice of fear.
And it kind of changes the way that we relate to our desires.
Where we kind of start saying things that like we need
something to happen to be OK. Like we're driven to fixate on
something 'cause we need this to be OK.
We won't be OK unless we have this.
Like we become desperate for a job or a vocation where we feel
important. We become kind of desperate for
a relationship where we finally feel accepted.
We feel desperate for a home to call our own for like the
stability that has always felt out of reach.
And it's like very subtle in the back of our mind, this kind of
desperation that can build up. But when we're desperate, we
become dangerous to ourselves and to others because our hearts
start manufacturing idols. When we feel like this life is
all there is, we try to like, force it to bend to our will no
matter what. We have to sacrifice because
that's what an idol demands. Like everything we have to give.
So that subconscious fear of death that that that sense of
urgency, it like pushes us to take our destiny into our own
hands. But church, we have to resist
it. We have to bring our desperation
to Jesus. That is the only way forward
because everything that Jesus touches becomes better.
There's a story in the gospels. I love it.
I feel like I think about this like an inordinate amount of the
time. Jesus is like walking through a
crowd and there's this woman who's been afflicted with a
blood disease for 12 years. So she's been suffering, she has
been outcast. She is like at the end of her
rope to fix this problem. And she knows that if she can
just touch out, she she knows who knows who told her.
She just has this like instinct, this feeling, this faith, this
belief that if she can just touch the edge of Jesus garment,
she will be healed. And she is.
It's like renewal is unavoidable in Jesus presence, like all she
does is reach for him and she is healed because Jesus is the only
one who fearful and desperate people can turn to for new life
and for New Hope. And it actually happens.
But learning to bring your deepest fears and desires to
Jesus is often a process for us. Like it's hard for some reason,
like we resist it. We, we, we struggle to get
there. Like I know that it definitely
has been for me. Like, you know, my fears and my
desires. Sometimes my, my strategy is
like to suppress them instead, just in case anyone is 1 is like
considering giving that a shot. It doesn't work.
I can just save you some time. Like not a good strategy.
The only thing that really helps is being honest before guide
coming to him admitting, for example, that it is painful to
want a family of your own and to not have one.
Like I don't think we need to edit that or diminish it or
change it. It's just hard.
But it's when the voice of fear tries to convince us you're
going to get trapped. You're going to be left alone.
You're going to have to carry the weight of disappointment for
the rest of your life. Like these are the lies that
fear wants us to believe because fear of death is very all or
nothing. There's no nuance.
It's very final. There's no room for Jesus to
come and intervene. There's no room you don't even
want to reach for the edge of his robe because you're afraid
of being disappointed. It's this lie that like whatever
struggle you're facing now is going to overcome you because
this is all there is. That's such a lie.
This is not even close to all there is.
Jesus's big thing is securing eternal life for us that is so
much bigger than the struggles that we're facing now.
That is why we watch people in the Bible do these insane,
extraordinary, courageous things because they have hope not only
that Jesus can meet them in this life, but that He will be there
in the life to come and that we will be with Him in the life to
come. But like these fear, these lies
they enter and it's so subtle. That's the thing that's so
subtle, the way it kind of whispers to you and you don't
really notice it at 1st. And I remember like thinking
about some of these fears when that felt like an obstacle
between me and God, like a a very recent season where it felt
like a wall between me and God. And I was like kind of pray
about these fears. But The thing is, I like wasn't
really bringing the fear to God. And the reason I realized is
because I had this like, projection of the future where
the disappointment I would feel if like I brought this to God
and it felt like he never answered, would be so much worse
than if I just tried to deal with the fear on my own.
And so I held back until the Holy Spirit kind of broke me
down because I did pray. And that's the thing about it.
It's like at some point he's kind of like chiseled chink,
chink, chink. And you're like, I have to come
to you. I'm desperate.
I need help. And I just began like wrestling
with him about these things and just talking to him more
honestly about my fears and being willing to just be like,
this is like, I'm putting it all on the table.
This is all or nothing. I'm all in like what, like I, I
need you. What, what, what, what do we do?
Jesus, Like what, what's the next step?
And for me, when I began talking to Jesus about my fears, when I
began naming them, when I began letting him speak into them and
challenging me and just like pour these things out, I became
so much more aware of what he's doing in my life right now.
Because that's the kind of veil that comes over you when you
believe the voice of fear is you're fixated on honestly,
oftentimes A fictional future, like a tragedy that hasn't
happened yet or a tragedy that happened in the past where you
don't believe that Jesus can redeem that.
But when you let him speak into I feel like I started to know it
was like it was like I was seeing things that were right in
front of me that I hadn't seen before, like ways that he is
like actively moving in my life today, for instance, you know, I
named the season of singleness is hard for me, right?
And it's easy to be like fixated on that in different moments in
time. But one of the things that I
forget that I feel like God really reminded me of is that in
this season, I have been deeply blessed by the friendship of
some extraordinary women where the season that we get to walk
through together is hard, but it's really beautiful.
And I don't think I would want to exchange that for something
different because I see Jesus in it.
And no matter what it is he gives you, no matter what your
heart still longs for, no matter what prayers you're still
praying, when you see him in something, there's this comfort
that comes where you're like, he's with me.
I know he's with me, He's with me and you know, there are
things like that that were very, they were very sweet.
You know, you see them and you notice them and, and it kind of
gives you this like comfort and relief.
There are other things that I like realize that he's doing in
my life right now. One of them is that he's kind of
created this time, this protected space for me to really
dive into some really painful things in my past and like work
through them. And that is not fun.
But I recognize that that is also a gift.
And one day it will feel that way.
One day I will see all the hidden ways that God has
answered my prayers daily to actually bring about the
greatest good and redeem my deepest pain, both on my behalf
and for others. And one day you will see all the
hidden ways that God is answering your prayers and that
there is no pain, No Fear, no longing that He is not aware of
and that He doesn't care so deeply about friends.
Fear thrives in the darkness, but once we bring it into the
light, it loses its power. And not just any light, the
light of Jesus. This light of Jesus that
promises you that his nearness, he is near to you now and He
will be working out redemption of everything that has hurt you
for all of eternity. What an incredible promise.
In His light, fears are exposed for what they are.
They're frail, they're fragile, like they feed on limitations
and exaggerations and this lie that Jesus cannot overcome your
fears. Jesus can overcome anything, and
he has. So I don't know what story
you're believing today that is rooted in fear, but I know that
Jesus wants to rewrite it. Bring your desires and your
desperation to Jesus. Let him remove the sting from
those things. Don't listen to your fears or
give them strength, or let them stay in the darkness.
Leave them in the hands of Jesus, nailed to the cross where
they belong. Jesus shared in our humanities
so that by his death he might break the power of death and
free us. No one else can promise you
that. No job, no life purpose, no life
partner, no wealth, no comfort. Nothing in this world can give
that to you. But Jesus, He is our hope, and
because of Jesus fear of death and all these other fears that
it breeds, they have been nailed to the cross.
So leave them there. Walk in freedom.
You can entrust your present circumstances and your future to
the God who is willing to become flesh, to endure suffering, and
even to die to bring us fullness of life.
Amen. Amen.
In closing So a few weeks back I babysat my friend's kids.
They're they're adorable. Her son is 11 months old and her
daughter is 3. She's the spitting image of my
friend. I don't think she stopped
talking the entire time I was there.
She's so cute. But her three-year old
apparently likes to sing her favorite hymn before bedtime.
And I was like, who is this kid? So before I put her to bed, we
sang together the song Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.
It's an old hymn. If you don't know it, it's
beautiful. But if there was one worship
song that summarized the message of Hebrews one and two, this
might be it. So to close, I would like to
read it to you since I'm not much of a singer.
You'll experience more talent in that area in just a minute, but
I'm going to read it to you. I'll read the the three kind of
different verses 1st and then we'll end with the refrain.
So this is Turn your Eyes upon Jesus.
O soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see.
There's light for a look at the Savior.
And life more abundant and free through death into life
everlasting He passed, and we follow Him there over us.
Sin no more has dominion for more than conquerors We are.
His word shall not fail you, He promised.
Believe Him, and all will be well.
Then go to a world that is dying, His perfect salvation to
tell. Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look
full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow
strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.